Twitter: crimeresearch1

Dr. John Lott from the Crime Prevention Research Center debated Baz Dreisinger from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice appeared on Turkish TRT World’s The Newsmakers to debate whether prison deters crime and whether prison should be abolished (Thursday, May 26, 2016).

John Lott’s newest piece at Investor’s Business Daily starts this way:

It’s easy to forget that in 1991 the U.S. murder rate was well over twice what it is today. In a speech last week at Atlanta’s Clark University, Hillary Clinton showed she doesn’t understand her call for an “end the era of mass incarceration” will endanger lives.

This data is available here (file fjs10f18.cvs).
The Federal prison population was about 17 percent of the state prison population in 2011 (Appendix Table 1). In state prisons was a much smaller percent of the population there for drug offenses (about 17 percent in 2011). Combining state and federal prison populations together places the total prison population incarcerated for drug offenses at 21 percent.…

This new study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the previous measures of recidivism that looked at just the first two years after release missed a lot of the problem with former prisoners being rearrested.